In 2023, I selected the word Root to guide my year. To be honest, this word showed up most visibly and loudly in my personal life, but it did come up for Yardia in the sense that the business felt really rooted in what worked best for it and for my relationship to it.
There was a sense of confidence that I could make choices for Yardia without stress or worry. This was my fifteenth year since starting Yardia as a side hustle, and my fourth year running Yardia as my full time job, so I felt like I'd been through enough shifts and years in hustling that I now understood on a deeper level what worked and where to spend my energy in the business.
As a result, there was a huge sense of ease and spaciousness in work and in the business, so that I didn't need to overextend my energy, time or focus on worrying about it. (I want to be realistic here though in that the year overall wasn't perfectly easy. All that focus, energy and time were unexpectedly required by other parts of my life, so Yardia's spaciousness was truly something I was grateful for.)
When I think about the word root, I think about a more internal growth in a deep way over branching out. Over the course of the year, Yardia got back to its roots in focusing on what was most important and authentic for the brand, and in doing so, experienced a sense of contentment and ease.
Read more about my word of the year.
Listen to my podcast interview on Choosing Business Contentment Over Business Growth.
I wasn't sure what to expect financially for 2023, especially with unpredictability in the world at large, chatter about recession in the US, and continued price increases in paper, supplies and manufacturing. So I was surprised to discover that I had my biggest year of financial growth, in spite of making some intentional choices that I'd initially thought would bring about a step back in revenue.
Here's how Yardia's 2023 revenue compared to 2022:
2023 Revenue by Category:
Quitting social media also helped me to get to the root of what truly inspired me. One of the biggest experiments I tried this year was quitting Instagram and TikTok. I deleted both apps from my phone in January with the thought that I'd take a brief break, but I still haven't returned to either.
The biggest lessons I learned from this ongoing experiment included that, at least for my own business goals, social media wasn't as much of a requirement or even necessary at all for growth and success. Without the constant scroll of images and videos from folks in the industry, I didn't struggle with comparing my business goals or path to those of others as much as I normally did. Without the pressure to create content, I gained back time and energy that would have been previously been filled with idea-creation, shooting timelapses, writing captions and engaging with comments.
Instead, I was able to spend my time and energy on other sales and product strategies that had a lot more visible impact on my bottom line. The two areas that I focused on instead were learning about overseas manufacturing and expanding and automating wholesale outreach.
Social media tends to have the biggest possible impact on direct-to-consumer ecommerce sales, and I did see a decrease in this branch of my sales by about 5% compared to 2022. However, with the increased focus on wholesale strategies, the wholesale arm of my business grew by 44%, far outweighing any lost revenue from ecommerce sales.
Read more about my experience with quitting social media.
With the time, space and energy that arose from quitting social media, I decided to spend the first few months of the year diving into expanding my direct sales outreach for wholesale.
Having researched a thousand stores in 2022 that I wanted to reach out to this year, I first set up a CRM, or customer relationship management software (I chose Pipedrive), to organize and track my outreach to these leads. I also spent a good amount of time and a lot of trial and error to set up automations to help smooth out and systematize my outreach process.
This felt like a huge success for me, with semi-customized email outreach sequences sent to a little over 800 cold leads over the course of the year. I had a little over a 6% order rate and gained over 50 new wholesale customers specifically from this process (in addition to the new customers that came through trade shows or organic traffic online).
If you're a business owner looking for a CRM, you can use the following affiliate link to get an extended free trial of Pipedrive.
For art and products, I started focusing most on my nature identification art prints as the core illustrations making up every product, instead of trying to create different illustrations for things like cards. I started each collection with the art prints I wanted to illustrate, and then used those elements as the basis for all my other product designs. This really simplified my creative process, and helped me to feel like each of my product lines were more connected to one another in a more cohesive way.
In January, I decided to take a class on overseas manufacturing, something that I was interested in, but didn't feel confident in my ability to responsibly navigate. As the class went on, I began to realize that if the entire world of manufacturing was now open to me, what kinds of products did I actually want to create and put out into the world?
I decided that going forward, I wanted to focus on products that were easy to store in my limited in-home workspace, unbreakable for easy shipping and sustainable in materials and for their post-use afterlife.
I started with sourcing organic cotton tea towels and biodegradable sponge cloths, and I was happily surprised to find that both product lines were an immediate hit, especially with the wholesale market. Since taking that class, both tea towels and sponge cloths became a core part of my product line, and with the next wholesale launch in January, I'll have nine styles of each product in the line.
The year has truly shaped up to be one of getting grounded in strengthening the roots of Yardia, all the systems and structures that help it to run smoothly, and in the ways that work best for my style.
That's meant doing things like:
🌼Painting botanical illustrations as the base element of all my products, (not just art prints as they had been in the past)
🌱Taking time to learn and implement automated systems for the wholesale outreach and sales arm of the business
🌿Hiring a bookkeeper and accountant to ease the financial work off my plate
🪴Getting in touch with what really matters to me by experimenting with a social media hiatus
🌳Setting strong boundaries for my workday hours, but also paying attention to my energy levels and adding naps and walks into the work day too.
The word root and themes of being rooted or rooting folks on has been coming up a lot in my professional conversations lately (including during a recent podcast interview that ought to be coming out sometime this fall). How appropriate that my word of the year would want me to check in with it now that we're halfway through.
So, if you chose a word to guide your year, perhaps this can serve as a reminder to check back in and reflect on it as well!
]]>I mostly decided to take a break for mental health reasons--I found myself scrolling on Tiktok for far more time than felt personally healthy, and I really struggled with comparison when I was using Instagram for my business. I wasn't sure how quitting a primary source of marketing for my livelihood would impact my business, but I figured it would be worth an experiment. So here's what happened.
After I made the social media change, from January 1st to June 14th Yardia's revenue increased by a whopping 31% compared to the same period in 2022. For reference, the prior increase in that same period from 2021 to 2022 had been 10%, so that was a significant change.
Because I'd gained time that would had been previously spent scrolling on social media, photographing products or recording videos, writing copy, scheduling posts and responding to dm's and comments, I now was able to make some changes to how I ran Yardia that made a far greater impact on the health and long-term sustainability of the business than Instagram was ever able to do.
So here's what I did instead of social media. In business, I spent more targeted time focusing on wholesale outreach and took on a few leadership roles, while also taking more time off for a bit of work-life harmony.
The past six months have been so rewarding that my social media hiatus will continue for the time being. Although I might return someday, for now the best way to stay up to date on Yardia releases, events and updates is by signing up for my weekly email newsletter.
]]>The past few weeks have been pretty heavy for us as a collective, on top of a dark several years. This week I've been slowing down and doing things that help me to process when I'm feeling numb. For me, that's painting, which allows me to have the space to then write down my thoughts. It helps me to get my head to a clearer space so I can mentally step back and recognize the feelings and thoughts just under the surface of that numbness.
So here's a bit of a storytime from processing recent ruminations.
I was a middle school art and leadership teacher for 13 years before I became a full-time artist at the end of 2019. When I was teaching, I thought about school shootings and protecting my students pretty much every day, each time I checked that my classroom door was locked.
Like many teachers, I'd run through scenarios in my head to plan for the worst case. My colleagues and I discussed and practiced how we'd lock down the art department building, with its many entrances, as quickly as possible. My assignment was to check that my classroom doors were locked, to pull any kids walking outside into the relative safety of the room, to close the blinds and lock the nearby hallway entrance.
My art supply closet floor was always intentionally kept clear enough to hide a classroom full of students. When we'd be sitting in the closet with the lights out during lockdown drills, sometimes, if the drill was longer than expected, I'd silently show my kids photos or videos of my pet chickens on my laptop to keep them quiet and occupied and to distract the kids who were nervous. Sometimes they'd check with me that it was indeed a drill.
I hated that this was a reality of my job. That it was a reality of my students' lives. But because it was, I wanted to show up for them. We studied advocacy, conflict resolution skills and protest art in class. I marched for my students' lives, attended their vigil and walkout after Parkland, supported them as one of their teacher chaperones in the anti-gun violence peer conversation group they wanted to start.
I was angry about the gun culture in our country that made this part of our day-to-day thoughts and routines as teachers and students at school. That this reality of gun violence was so preventable, but continued to happen over and over again. I'm still angry that it continues to happen over and over again.
We don't need more guns, or such easy access to assault-style weapons. We need to be able to go to school, or to the grocery store, or to church without fear of being shot.
Kids need to learn.
Teachers need to teach.
Schools need more books.
More art. More history. More futures.
More action. More voting. And it's not a hopeless cause.
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I started Yardia as an Etsy shop in 2008, and have been using the platform ever since, even while growing my own retail website and my wholesale business at the same time.
The revenue I earned from Etsy was one of the reasons I was able to quit my day job and pursue Yardia full time in 2019, and in 2021 it still made up about 17% of my income--a small but significant enough amount that helps me to pay for things like food and health insurance.
So while I'm still unable to leave Etsy entirely without a noticeable hit to my ability to pay for basic necessities (though I'm slowly getting closer to be able to do so), I am in a privileged enough position to be able to close my Etsy shop for one week in solidarity with the the Etsy Strike.
Here are the demands, from etsystrike.org:
For a journalistic explanation of the strike, you can read this article from NPR, and for a maker's perspective, Janine Kwoh of Kwohtations wrote up a fantastic explanation of the demands on her blog.
But I do want to share some of my personal reasons of why I decided to participate.
Although the Etsy platform has been a big part of why I'm able to do what I do, over the past few years I've become increasingly troubled by how many of their business decisions were straying further and further away from Yardia's core values: Nature, Creativity, Empathy, Belonging and Harmony.
Since going public in 2015 and letting their B Corporation status expire, Etsy has, in my opinion, appeared to focus more on short-term profit generation and meeting demands of shareholders than the mission and values of the company that originally drew me into the community of makers and artists back in 2008.
Today, I see a company that on the one hand, for those of us with more established customer bases and brands, serves as an algorhythmic platform to successfully add onto our sales, and on the other hand, sells to newer or more inexperienced makers the dream of a quick and easy way to quit their day jobs and follow their passion, when the reality is that up to 65% of Etsy sellers earn less than $100 a year from their shops.
Business is personal, as Trudi LeBron says. It's important to me that Yardia as a business stands up for what I believe in, and earn me a living. I may not yet be able to financially leave the Etsy system entirely yet, but I can use my privilege to stand in solidarity with those of us artists and makers who can't, for whatever reason, participate in the strike this week.
Part of the creative process that I hold a strong value to is ensuring that what I put out into the world is my own creation. When I'm designing a new product, I'm careful to search through the works of my friends, artists I admire, and a simple keyword search on Etsy to make sure that I'm not subconsciously copying or otherwise infringing on another artist's intellectual property.
Unfortunately, these days on Etsy I find resellers on the platform who have copied my listing text and titles directly and are selling knock-off versions of my own products using what looks to be clip art for the product mockups.
The process for taking these intellectual property violations off the platform is currently neither easy or intuitive. If I am a buyer going to Etsy to search for a maker-created product, I want to make sure that what I am purchasing is indeed the artist's own work and not a copy or knockoff design, but at this point in time that isn't always a possibility.
The Star Seller program was introduced in 2020 to feature "the best in customer experience" on Etsy, but includes requirements for sellers to respond to messages within 24 hours, including on weekends. Etsy calls this program "aspirational", but it seems to aspire to an always-on hustle culture that contrasts a more human and less exploitative way of life.
I believe that it is a human right to have a balance of rest and work and I choose for Yardia to grow at a slower paced yet more sustainable and longer-term oriented artisan work-and-lifestyle. Our lives, health and, really, the creative process rely on our ability to rest and to take time off.
While I might now be in a position to be able to reject the premise of the Star Seller program for my own business without too much impact, I stand in solidarity with those artists who cannot.
Much of the coverage about the Etsy Strike has focused on the recent fee increase, and on the offsite ads program that is mandatory for sellers like me who have had some success on Etsy and have surpassed a revenue threshold.
What this means that Etsy can use my products in ads across the internet and social media, and charge me a 12% fee if a buyer clicks through the ad and purchases from my shop within 30 days. I don't have the ability to opt out of this. It also includes advertising via certain social media and tech companies that I otherwise intentionally choose to avoid giving my money to (i.e. I choose to not set up social media shops or run ads on these platforms) because of how these companies' practices and public statements have highly misaligned to Yardia's values.
This is in addition to the regular seller fees, which jumped by around a 30% increase this week, even after Etsy experienced a couple of record setting profit years during the pandemic.
Overall, the main reason why I decided to participate in the Etsy Strike is because I went inward to check in with my gut and values. Yardia is a work in progress, and selling products online is a nuanced and complex system.
I'm not quite idealistic enough to believe that this strike will make an immediate difference, or any change at all, but I asked myself, what's the worst that could happen? I considered that the worst case scenario of participating is getting kicked off of Etsy and thus taking a 17% pay cut, which I'm sure I could figure out how to manage if that highly unlikely situation were to occur.
But by not participating, I would be making a business choice that goes against all of Yardia's values, and against what I believe in. So I chose to act and stand up for what I felt was right.
As a buyer, here are a few ways you can show your support to makers like me this week:
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🤞🏽Making connections with a couple of folks for some hopeful and exciting licensing opportunities
📝Taking wholesale orders from new and old accounts
💌Getting to show my product line to a couple of major stores in the stationery industry so that I'm now on their radar
👯♀️Seeing my trade show and Paper Camp friends again, and meeting new friends from our very active GCA Village What's App group that we used to help each other prepare for the show.
🍔Continuing my NY Now ritual of walking the High Line and enjoying Shake Shack after breaking down my display at the end of the show
✈️On the flight home, a musician on her way to a show treated the cabin to a quick and impromptu song. She had a beautifully smooth voice, what a fun surprise to end the trip!
One of the orders I received this week came from a store I first reached out to back in 2016.
In retrospect, I can clearly see that my work wasn't yet a good fit for the store back then, but today we really do complement each other in how our businesses and styles grew and changed. I mention this six-year waiting period because I'm proud of Yardia's slow growth. I started Yardia as an Etsy shop in 2008. It took:
👉🏽7 years to create and revise my line enough to enter the wholesale market.
👉🏽11 years before I earned enough income from Yardia to quit my day job.
👉🏽12 years before I reached 100 stockists, first exhibited at NSS/NY Now, and acquired my first licensing project.
And then the unexpected storm of the pandemic hit. Because Yardia had grown slowly and intentionally for so many years, the business wasn’t blown down, but instead pulled through from its deep roots and flourished.
I built Yardia one store at a time, year after year, doing the work and learning from my Paper Camp and Greeting Card Association communities along the way.
This industry isn't a sprint. It requires patience, stamina and adaptability to make it work for the long haul.
If it feels like our dream stores aren't responding to our products in a particular moment, perhaps with continued perseverance and creativity, six years from now we might end up being good complements for the future versions of each other.
And even if we're not, we've still done the work for all those years to create art and a business that deeply expresses our message and values. And we can feel authentic success in that from our inward sense of confidence.
]]>I never intentionally choose my guiding word for each year, instead I wait for it to come to me. The word inward arrived in my head in early December and it just felt right. It felt like a direct step forward from 2021's ease, and I like the direction it gives me for decision making--to go with my gut, to know the answers are already within me if I pay enough attention.
In 2021, I learned a lot more about myself and came to a level of self-acceptance even stronger than before. In arriving to that place, I began to understand that often the times when I felt like I should work harder, do better, or strive for perfection were really because I found myself in an environment or system that wasn't actually built for me. So instead of approaching 2022 from a "new year new me" perspective, this year I want to focus on not changing anything about myself (because we're all already good as we are), but finding ways to create systems and accommodations around me that will help me to fulfill my needs and live the life that is right for me, specifically.
I want to go inward as a form of self-inquiry, but more importantly as a way to look more critically at the habits, standards and norms of business that I've been socialized into seeing as the right way to do things. To always do a gut check, to ask more questions.
Even if I want my business to grow, what can that look like? What can I do differently? What would a thriving business look like without urgency? What might my thriving business look like if I fully cater to intersectional identities and speak to women of color? How can I begin to unravel everything that I've been taught is the norm and question whether it actually makes sense for me and my needs? How can I create exactly the kind of work I want to be doing? And what is enough?
Unraveling these questions means looking within myself, figuring out what I really need, and determining the paths to take that are best suited to the life I want to live. Because I've already learned that most of what we're taught about work isn't the only way to be successful, and that living a life that makes me happy has sometimes meant straying from the prescribed path and stepping over to the path that I'm called to follow. I can seek out the deer trail with the most gentle impact. It's already been there for years, but it might not be the one that explorers charted in the name of discovery and conquest.
One of the ways I've learned that works best for me is seeing my goals as checklists (because I do love a list), so that's what will follow. My general themes for business goals are to get the house in order, rethink everything, and continue to work on accessibility and inclusion. And I threw in a few general to-do's for 2022 as well.
My word of 2021 was ease, and it guided me through my year more than any word I've chosen in the past. Every time I made a decision in 2021, I considered how ease played into the choice. "How would this action make my life more ease-filled?" "How could I approach this problem with more ease?"
With ease, I started with the three goals I set for 2021: do more of what's working well, slow and intentional marketing, and simplify operations. What ended up happening, though, was instead of finding business strategies in ways that worked best for Yardia, the year gave me time to become more at ease with myself so that my business could flourish in the ways that worked best for me.
This wasn't work that was necessarily easy, but it opened myself up to understanding ease in a new light.
In the spring, I invested in a six-month decolonization-informed coaching program for WOC entrepreneurs, Revolutionary Rising, where I worked on self-acceptance and using my voice in the way that was easiest for me--through my art. I developed a much more comforting relationship with my intersectional identities, and found joy in connecting with other women of color bosses on similar paths. Getting in alignment with my racial identity created space to explore and discover my neurodivergent identity, which was something I had only an inkling of understanding prior to this time. I learned more about what I needed to run a business that works best for me, and through experimenting I learned that what works for me is often different from the standards I'd previously absorbed on how businesses should be run.
I worked through mindset blocks until I could let go of needing to do it all, and began entrusting others with taking on some of the work. I hired a marketing consultant to set up systems to make my email marketing process a lot easier and more intentional, and then hired a part time employee to help me with packaging products and fulfilling orders. In doing this, I bought back time to create a more simplified production release cycle system, and got ahead of my next collection, instead of anxiously producing new work at the last minute before a tradeshow like I usually ended up doing in the past. This was especially helpful since supply chain paper shortages made the printing and production time about twice as long as it usually did. And now I have my new cards in hand, ready to release in 2022!
Ease meant allowing myself to shine as I am, and to accept myself in my identity as the leader of my business. I became more intentional about rest, and about noticing my emotions and needs. I'm proud of all the naps, runs, walks and gardening time I took for myself! Ease meant recognizing that I don't need to change myself to grow, because I'm already enough as I am, and that I've already built a life for myself that I love, in a place that I want to stay for a long time.
Now onto some more concrete reflections. I had no idea what to expect when it came to Yardia's finances for 2021, since 2020 was such an anomaly of a business year. Looking over 2021, Yardia pretty much followed the path of the pandemic--sales shifted from online retail to wholesale as people began to venture out into the world to purchase from stores in person again.
Overall, gross revenue increased by about 17%. I gained 58 new stockists, participated in one holiday craft show (Renegade Craft Fair) that exceeded my pre-pandemic craft show sales record by about 28%, and participated in two virtual trade shows (Noted and Faire Summer Market) and one in-person trade show (NY Now). At Noted, I was selected to pitch Yardia as part of the Makers of Color Pitch Program, and my line was picked up by three of the four stores with whom I shared my story.
This was the first year in which wholesale made up a majority of my revenue, which was pretty exciting! I love working with independent stores and I look forward to continuing and growing my relationships with my stockists in 2022.
In 2021, I experimented with the timing, pace and themes of collections I released for retail and wholesale. I decided to release several smaller collections throughout the year, instead of the standard half-year or quarterly wholesale release schedule.
As I became more at ease in my intersectional identities, my artwork and products began to reflect that as well. I created collections designed for Loving Day to celebrate those of us who identify as multiracial and those of us in interracial relationships, and I released a collection to honor my Chamoru heritage on Liberation Day. I expanded my Multiracial and Flourishing design to encompass many more identities in the Flourishing collection.
I felt as if I could much more authentically express my whole self through the products I created in 2021, and it was especially satisfying to see so many people who look like me at Renegade Craft Fair visit my booth and get excited about seeing products that were designed just with them in mind. It was so fun to chat with so many CHamoru 'cousins' at the show! I felt gratified to be able to create the kind of representation I so often longed for when I was younger, but rarely was able to find. I'm glad that I'm now in a position to be able to create that for myself and for many of you as well.
I mean, most of 2021 felt like an unexpected extra, from getting vaccinated, becoming an auntie, traveling again, doing NY Now, pitching my line virtually, and getting to do a craft show again...while also further happily sinking into my understanding of how much I love having a job where I can stay at home by myself to create, plan and build my business on my own terms.
In 2021, I started reading books again! This was mostly made possible by my local library reopening so I could check out paper copies each week. Here are a few favorites that made an impact on my work and life (I mostly read nonfiction).
I also found a new favorite podcast to listen to while working: Maintenance Phase. It reminds me of the criticism of the wellness industry found in The Dream combined with the humor and empathy found in My Favorite Murder (two other favorites).
And on a really practical note, I finally bought small business insurance, something I've been meaning to do for over a year. I went with a Business Owners Policy, which includes liability and property, from Next Insurance. I also pay for workers comp insurance through Washington State. Getting this task checked off my list makes me excited to take care of more "getting my house in order" to-do's in 2022 that I've been putting off.
This year was all about stepping into a new identity as a leader and all the growing pains internally that go along with stepping into a larger space than what I was previously used to. I became more confident in the kind of work and message I was creating, and I produced a ton of art this year. I felt creatively fulfilled and on fire with inspiration.
Goodbye 2021, I'm grateful for this period of time in which everything stayed the same and everything changed, where it felt like it was all baby steps, but the continuous motion of walking carried me across a long distance in the end.
]]>This has been in the works for several years, and after a pandemic-year delay, I can finally announce to you the launch of Yardia's first fabric collection, created in collaboration with Clothworks for the 2021 Western Washington Quilt Shop Hop.
The line includes three fabric designs perfect for quilting, based on my art print illustrations of evergreen trees, Washington State symbols and wildflowers, including a packed floral design of our state flower, the coast rhododendron. You can even download finishing instructions for the official 2021 Shop Hop Quilt.
The 2021 Western Washington Quilt Shop Hop is from June 18th through July 1st. You can ONLY find the fabric line exclusively at participating quilt shops in Washington, so contact the closest store to you to if you want to make sure to get your hands on some! This is a limited edition release, so once they're sold out, they'll be gone forever.
Enjoy your sewing projects and please share any photos of finished pieces with me by tagging @yardia on Instagram--I'd love to see your creativity!
]]>Yardia Points rewards our very best collectors. You can earn 5 points for every dollar you spend at Yardia and receive discounts to apply to future purchases in return. 100 points = $1 off your next purchase.
1. Sign up. Click on the blue Rewards shopping bag icon that floats in the lower right of your screen to join for free.
2. Collect your points. Re-sign in to your points account each time you visit Yardia. Earn five points for every dollar you spend at Yardia when you're signed into your points account. You can also earn points for following @Yardia on Instagram and as a special birthday treat.
3. Redeem your rewards. With every 100 points you earn, get a dollar off your next purchase.
1. You can't redeem or use your points rewards with any other discount offers (but you can still earn points even when using coupons or other offers!)
2. You must be signed into your points account to earn, so make sure to click that Rewards icon and sign in whenever you shop with Yardia!
Join Yardia and start earning points!
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At the beginning of the month, I began delving back into Yardia's five core values to reaffirm and further clarify how I'll use them to take the next leap I envision for the business.
Yardia’s values (nature, creativity, empathy, community and harmony) guide everything I do in business--from the art I create, to my approach to marketing, to the way I strategize for the future growth of the company, to my communication style and philosophy, and to the structures and boundaries that define the work day.
These are values that are embedded in my company and in my personal history: they're connected to my personal values, to the ancestral values of my CHamoru heritage, and to the Pacific Northwest culture in which I was raised.
Rediscovering the nuances of these values was a slow and deliberate process that involved a lot of mind-wandering, journaling, reading and research, and the slowness helped to stay rooted firmly in my foundations in order to grow upwards and outwards.
Delving into values and considering them within the structure of my word of the year, ease, helped me to see more clearly what my priorities need to be, and where I’d been stumbling along without intention.
I rediscovered how much mindset continued to play a role in either clouding or clearing my vision to let things be easeful. It’s like when the weather clears in Seattle and you suddenly realize that Mt. Rainier has been sitting there in front of us this whole time; we just couldn’t see it through the fog and rain.
Sometimes it takes looking at a problem from a new angle and a willingness to experiment to find the solution.
Once I began to define my priorities and give my focused attention to them, solutions began to open up and sometimes even seemed to seek me out independently. All they needed were time and attention.
And that leads me to this question: how do you think an artist spends her work day?
Long ago, I once had a student share with me that she wanted to be an artist when she grew up, so then she wouldn't really have to think about writing or the other school subjects she struggled with. I had to break it to her gently that I actually did way more writing and math in my job as an artist than I did in my job as her teacher.
So figuring out exactly how my work day breaks down using data was an eye-opener, even though I'd been the one experiencing it all. I tracked my time for about a week and a half and this was how my average work day broke down.
Shipping & Fulfillment: 38%
Admin, Tech Maintenance & Customer Service: 20%
Marketing: 18%
Meetings with Masterminds: 9%
Photography: 6%
Writing: 6%
Strategy Planning: 2%
Painting: 1%
Considering that my main goals for the year were to spend more time painting, writing and working on the bigger picture from an easeful position (i.e. the three things I spent the least amount of time on), this time data helped me to see that some priorities needed to change.
What became clear was that in order to create the ease I desired, I really needed to prioritize three things behind the scenes at Yardia: systems, automation and delegation.
So that's what I started focusing on: how I spent my work hours, researching automations, services and experts, documenting my processes and looking at what was currently getting lost in the shuffle.
Overall, it's been really valuable to prioritize this deep dive of my operations and processes, so that I can make strategic choices for me and Yardia in the future. Eventually, once the pandemic has eased (fingers crossed!) I'll most likely be looking for a part time shipping and fulfillment assistant to help me out in house (if you think this could be you or someone you know, feel free to email me) and in the nearer future, I'll be setting up some automations and hiring a virtual assistant to help me out with administrative work.
In the month of March, one of the biggest hurdles I learned to inch over was the need to trust and let go, and coming to the realization that Yardia had grown enough that I really couldn't do it all alone anymore without dropping the ball on some priorities. It was time to emerge from the previous chrysalis.
So now I'm taking time to re-learn the kinds of things I used to teach: how to embrace my own leadership style, how to hire slowly and with intention, how to understand my boundaries, and how to maintain a mindset of growth and a sense of grace through the ups and downs that will inevitably come up as I take the next step in my business. It’s been an exercise in creating intentional ease.
]]>How are you doing in processing all of this? I hope you're taking the time you need for yourself.
I have been too, and yet it feels like I've also been going online more often than usual to seek out a kind of distanced observational community support system. I bet some of you might be doing the same. So that's why I wanted to process in writing while I'm over here feeling my feelings, in case you need to read through a small section of someone's currently messily organized mind.
I've been contemplating how sometimes I feel a pressure to share my truth in a very colonialized way, when my actual truth is that starting to stitch together my own stories of the intersections of racism and fetishization and gaslighting and misogyny feels, frankly, re-traumatizing. It's an intergenerational trauma that repeats again and again.
And at the same time, the intergenerational power of my ancestors, of the taotaomo'na and maga'håga of the motherland are calling me within. So I'll keep listening to their wisdom and be patient with myself.
So I'm still processing, clearly. And slowing things down and making space. And I hope you're doing the same.
So I guess all I want to tell you, is that I'm so proud of who you are. Take care of yourself in whatever way you need to. We each deserve the right to feel our feelings, to process, and to take up space, and that especially includes you.
Love,
Brigida
]]>The creative process that went into designing Yardia's logo is a pretty decent amalgamation of the qualities and values that make up the Yardia brand as a whole.
I designed my logo inspired by the idea that Yardia illustrates the quiet beauty of the Pacific Northwest.
When I first started thinking about the current version of my brand back in 2016, I looked to a photo I'd taken on a hike, of Mt. Rainier and a meadow of wildflowers. I realized that Yardia was about the small details we see in nature--the lupines and Indian paintbrushes on the side of the trail even more than the grander view of the mountain.
This is what led me to design my logo--a simplified version of Mt. Rainier above my handwritten company name, and surrounded by two lupine flowers embracing the circle of the image. Lupines are my favorite wildflower (I even have one tattooed on my painting arm) and they're a symbol of imagination in the language of flowers.
Yardia's brand colors used in the logo came from another photo I took of the shoreline at Point Whitehorn Marine Reserve near Birch Bay. I incorporated the deep blues and light grays of a quiet, cloudy beachside morning as what I thought represented the Northwest the most to me personally.
Nature, cozy and pensive. Last spring, I took Sara Tasker's Insta Retreat course and in one of the early exercises, narrowed my creative style to three guiding words. These were what I came up with. Although the exercise was focused on photography, I think these words apply to the style of my art as well.
My creative style is one that's quiet and observing, one in which my process doesn't always feel like it's coming from me but is somehow flowing through me.
Working in watercolor allows for fine detail and soft colors, and it also has a mind of its own--I need to be in collaboration with it instead of controlling it. Watercolor isn't something in which an artist can rework or "fix" mistakes, but instead must find a way to trust that the paint knows what it's doing. There has to be a communion between the paint and the painter.
My art focuses on nature, especially the botanical and landscape. I love to paint trees because I find them to be such a complex challenge, and painting them requires me to learn something new from the observational process each time. It's a quiet flow of work and a visual meditation in the process.
And then just for fun, I imagined my art taking a personality test and looking up its astrology chart. Here's what I imagine it would be: ISTJ, Virgo, either a 5w4 or 4w5.
Most of the time, I tend to paint with a fairly consistent palette--mostly greens, blues, violets and browns. Colors that are inspired by nature, particularly that in the Pacific Northwest: mosses, evergreens, cloudy skies and windy gray coastlines--these are the kinds of colors that light up my senses.
However, when creating my most recent collection, I found myself drawn to all the hope and brightness of springtime. Pink cherry blossoms, magenta tulips and yellow daffodils, with rainbow sunrise skies!
Chalk it up to the months of isolation, the dark winter, or any other elements of the panacea of stresses, trauma and grief we've collectively been going through; I wanted to use all the brightest, softest kinds of colors that reminded me of fresh growth and new life.
And now that we're seeing spring arrive in full force here in Seattle, I'm even more happy that I got to spend the late winter painting with these cheery floral colors.
So in reality, it seems as if Yardia's brand colors are, in a way, even more nature-inspired than I realized. They're drawn from the seasons, and together, summer, autumn, winter and spring form a complete whole.
So that's the basis of Yardia's brand, where I create illustrations and products inspired by the quiet beauty of nature in the Pacific Northwest and designed to help you love the place you live, just as much as I love the place I live.
Some of the resources I used to develop and clarify my new year intentions included: Proof To Product's 4 Questions to Jump Start Your Strategy Planning, exercises from Simple and Season's The Trail, and Biddy Tarot's New Year Spread using the fantastic Future Ancestor Tarot deck from Seattle artist Alexa Villanueva.
My guiding word for 2021 is ease. Just like the previous year, I originally had another word in mind that I planned to use (clarity), but then in late December, I felt a strong urge to change it to ease, and this time, I listened to my intuition and made the switch. The word ease feels really right for how I want to move into the new year and live through the unknown.
For work and Yardia, the word ease represents a mindset shift, a way of being and feeling, and thoughtful forward action. Here are some of the main intentions through which I hope to incorporate ease into 2021:
The kind of business I'd like Yardia to be is one that's slow, intuitive, and on its own purpose-driven schedule, and this year I'd like to explore how to make that happen on a practical level, building on some of the choices I made for the business in 2020. Here are some areas of focus for Yardia in 2021:
Last year was a sort of reset, so I can start the new year in consideration of what worked well in the midst of the pandemic, as opposed to any other period of normalcy. With that in mind, I plan to bring more ease into my creative and strategic work by capitalizing on what worked well in 2020 and letting go of what fell short.
This means that I'll focus my energy on online wholesale and retail transactions, and plan the core of my business strategies around those marketplaces. At the same time, I'd like to dig more deeply into the values, mission and purpose of my business, so I might not always follow traditional shopping seasons or strategies when they don't fit well with Yardia's business values. This will be a year to continue to explore how I can align a product-based business to a slower lifestyle and create more meaning and purpose in the shopping experience.
For products and collections, I'll simplify the bulk of new offerings to the types of items that customers wanted most, which happily are what I'm most interested in creating anyway. Pacific Northwest-inspired art prints and cards will continue to be created for collectors and shops, which works well since I have a number of ideas for new artworks to create. I also learned last year that camp mugs have become my top selling items, yet include the smallest range of designs. I've limited stock of these items in the past due to storage constraints, but adding at least one more mug design is likely to come in the near future.
I'll also sort through the process of discontinuing what isn't working well, and gradually let go of a few designs and product ranges as they sell through.
At the end of 2020, I joined The Trail in anticipation of my 2021 goals to bring more ease into my workday and more intention into my marketing process. I've been finding it to be just the sort of education and accountability I've needed to clarify the direction to steer Yardia, and to schedule time to go further inward into knowledge, alignment and trust when it comes to marketing and self-employment.
With this support in place, some of the practical steps that I'm seeking to take in 2021 include a stronger focus on content creation for Yardia's blog, Instagram, Pinterest and newsletters. With the newsletter, I'm especially looking to create more consistency in my wholesale newsletter while still providing value and partnership to my shop-owner customers.
In 2020, I began to take steps to have a more mindful relationship with Instagram. I found that what worked best for me was to delete the app from my phone at the end of each workday and on weekends (and to reinstall it at the beginning of the next work day), and to also delete the app for occasional extended breaks such as when I took my end-of-year time off in December. In 2021, although I'll continue this practice, I'd also like the time that I do spend on Instagram to be more thoughtful in engagement and connection. Right now I envision this as less frequent posting of my own content and more scheduled time to seek out and engage with the work of clients, mentors and peers in an honest and natural way. In essence, to bring the social back into my use of social media.
The last and hopefully most impactful way I'd like to bring more ease into 2021 is by simplifying, systematizing and automating my day-to-day operations, especially when it comes to packaging and shipping. In 2020 I packed and shipped out over 1,700 packages as a single person, a number that was more than overwhelming during the busiest months, but was crucial to keeping the business afloat.
Although I'd considered hiring help after the 2019 holiday season, the pandemic put all that on hold since I didn't feel comfortable bringing another person into my at-home workspace in order to best protect my health and ability to continue to earn an income (since there really isn't sick leave when you're self-employed).
So in 2021, I'd like to research and implement all the ways I can simplify or automate the little tasks that make up fulfillment operations. By doing this, I hope to make the process faster and easier for me when I'm working alone, and also to systematize the process for the time when it will feel safe enough to have the option to hire out assistance, particularly for the busy holiday season. Figuring out hiring logistics, optimizing processes and researching other forms of outsourcing will also provide as many alternative choices as I can discover in case pandemic circumstances don't make hiring comfortable in terms of safety concerns by fall.
In this new year, I hope to cultivate my work and tend to my creativity, to dig inward more than focusing on outward growth. Bringing more ease into my daily life and work will help elevate Yardia into the business I wish it to be for the long term. 2021 provides the opportunity for a clean slate and for inward exploration as we steer forward into the next normal.
]]>For 2020, I chose voice as my word of the year, with connection as a secondary, supporting word. I expected voice to be the primary word for my business year. I expected to learn to express my voice as a leader and as an employer, to learn how to grow a team and scale my business. I thought that voice would be loud and ambitious and driven.
Instead, the word voice crept into my life more subtly than I anticipated. After all, it was the word connection that became so loud and urgent! With the pandemic and stay-at-home periods being so isolating, connecting to others was understandably top of mind for life and business.
I began to think that voice didn't really have a place in the new normal. But just as the pandemic brought forth a reimagining of habits and work and interaction, so did a new sense of voice--an inner voice--quieter and wiser and what I really needed.
This year, I deepened my trust in my voice and inner guide. A slower, quieter approach to business, art and showing up that felt more authentic to me and to Yardia's values. This voice didn't need to be the loudest one in the room, or the fastest to respond to a crisis, because what I valued more was thoughtful, deliberate action. Thinking through choices, a desire to experience first and speak later from that experience, and listening to the inner compass more than external trends or cacophony.
My voice came from being in alignment with my values, and because of this I could make it through the year with confidence that I was in the right place doing the right thing for me right now.
One of the earliest highlights of the year feels like a lifetime ago, which was choosing, at the last minute, to exhibit at the National Stationery Show as part of NYNow at the beginning of February.
Jumping into my first major trade show would have been a highlight in an ordinary year, but was even more so in 2020 since it was also my last experience with travel and flying for a while. Making it happen in a quick turnaround and seeing the benefits made me realize that it's something I’d like to prioritize in the future to make connections I can't create online.
Which leads me to my second biggest highlight, which is such late-breaking news that I’d originally written about it in the “challenges and pandemic failures” section of this year in review.
One of the connections I made at NYNow was with representatives from Zola. After the show, they reached out and offered a licensing collaboration to illustrate an invitation suite. I was thrilled and a little nervous about this opportunity and worked on it during the first month of lockdown.
After I finished the project and it became clear that weddings weren’t going to be happening for a while, I figured that perhaps this was a project that succumbed to the impact of the pandemic. But as I was writing this blog post, I checked the Zola website and saw that my invitations, the Atchison Suite in sunrise, sunset and night colorways, had, at last, gone live!
I’m so proud of this collaboration and the opportunity it gives couples to share a Pacific Northwest-inspired watercolor invitation suite to celebrate those future wedding plans that had been put on hold in 2020.
The data I was most curious to dig into was my business financial picture. Compared to 2019, in 2020 gross revenue (not including the PPP loan I received) went down by 4%. To break this revenue down further, numbers for my three usual income streams were (in comparison to 2019):
And even though I earned less revenue on sales, my expenses decreased enough for net profit to increase by 39%.
A lack of craft show expenses (like registration fees, marketing materials, travel and more), the addition of revenue from new products I already had in stock (like seconds and original paintings), and tightening the budget in little ways across the board helped to reach this increase in profit. I learned that constant growth and scaling weren’t the only path to sustainability, and that deliberate and intentional decisions could help Yardia thrive just as well.
Yardia’s main revenue streams shifted their allocation in the overall pie of the business. In 2020, wholesale made up 51% of revenue, online retail 44%, craft shows 4% and other (a few one-off projects and a tiny bit of bank interest) made up 1%. This compared to 2019's 42% wholesale, 37% craft shows and 21% online.
The biggest adjustment came from narrowing income streams down to two: wholesale and online retail. As for craft shows? I only participated in 3 in-person markets in 2020, compared to the 31 I did in 2019. And surprise, surprise, I found that I loved having weekends free instead of being booked up with markets. I loved digging in the garden, recharging, taking naps and having time to even do simple household chores without worrying about packing up my car to rush off to Fremont or Magnuson Park or Tacoma or South Lake Union.
And as much as I missed and appreciated the vendor community and the real value of receiving direct feedback from customers every time I participated in a market in the past, I didn't miss the physical and mental exhaustion that the intensity of markets left me with, or the time I needed to recover from them afterward.
So what's changed? Well, craft shows will no longer be a major part of my business model. If anything, in the next normal, I'll limit my market participation to a highly select few so that I can occasionally talk to customers and hear their feedback, but still maintain my primary focus on wholesale and online ventures.
Mindset and trusting the process were the biggest challenges to deal with in the uncertainty of the pandemic. Logically, I could see by my numbers and built-up savings that I'd survive the year, but I struggled, like all of us I imagine, to process the loss of what could have been.
Eventually I learned to use organization and strategy to create a sense of control and reassurance. Having a full understanding of my financial picture, mapping out how to make the numbers work for the short term and creating contingency plans and a 3-year recovery road map helped me to see how I could reach my goals of sustainability in ways I wouldn't have thought to do otherwise.
Shipping was another huge challenge this year. Once it started to look like the postal system was going to be having some major issues with shipping and delivery, I decided to close down my Etsy shop after a very early Christmas shipping deadline on December 3rd. December 3rd passed and my fears about shipping delays began to come true.
Luckily, most people seemed to be informed enough from extensive media coverage and hopefully by reading my ever-growing shipping information page to understand why packages weren't arriving on time.
Although customers continued to be able to order through my main website (with extensive popups and notices about orders not arriving by Christmas), I'm guessing there were fewer complaints about missing packages than would have occurred if I hadn't been so vocally cautious about potential shipping delays and encouraging early holiday shopping. This early holiday break is something I'll consider repeating next year.
One of the joys of this year at home was that it gave me the momentum to tick off a lot of the little to-do's that I'd wanted to implement into Yardia, but never seemed to find the right time to do the research to make them happen. Here are a few of the tasks that got done at last:
Yardia began its giving program with 5% of gross revenue from the online shop donated to local non-profits, something I'd wanted to implement since I'd started the company. I knew what types of organizations I wanted to donate to, but I'd struggled with figuring out the logistics until I discovered a Shopify app to help me automate the process. You can learn more and see the total donations since I began this program about 6 months ago on the Shop For Good page.
Some other to-do's included making sure my website was up-to-date in GDPR requirements, creating carbon-offset shipping options, subscribing to an inventory management system to deal with multi-channel supply chain headaches, and spending a month digging into my email marketing provider's systems to create content that I’d been putting off. I invested in taking Me and Orla's The Insta Retreat and loved spending time diving into photography, branding and social media strategy. In late November, I started another learning program through Simple and Season's The Trail, but this was more in anticipation of my 2021 intentions.
This year, I recommend ordering gifts no later than December 3rd for Christmas and Kwanzaa, and by November 19th for Hanukkah. Because of the pandemic, I won't be participating in any craft shows or holiday markets this year, so online shopping will be the way to go if you want to purchase from Yardia directly.
With disruptions due to COVID-19, recent and potential changes by the current postmaster general, and an even bigger transition to online shopping due to the pandemic, shipping times are even more unpredictable than the usual holiday rush of increased shipping volume and winter weather disruptions. This is why I'm recommending that the latest order date is AT LEAST 3 weeks in advance of holidays, birthdays or other events. That means ordering by December 3rd if you want to increase your chances of receiving an order by Christmas.
Of course, as in any year, shipping times can't be guaranteed, and once a package leaves my hands and enters the postal system, I have no control over the order and have exactly the same tracking information that you do. Like many other small businesses in the United States, I rely on the USPS and our hard-working mail carriers to be able to keep my business open.
I've put some answers to frequently asked shipping questions on the Shipping Information for COVID-19 page, and on my FAQ's page.
I'll be keeping the shop open after December 3rd and will ship items out on my usual Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule, but please don't expect any order to arrive in time for Christmas if placed after the 3rd, especially if you're shipping outside of Seattle.
With increased holiday shopping this time of year, occasionally items might sell out. If something sells out, it's unlikely I'll be able to get it back in stock before the new year, so shopping ahead of time is always a good bet.
If it's after December 3rd and you need a Yardia item prior to a holiday, what can you do instead? Here are some options:
Find a local gift or stationery store that carries Yardia products. You can find a list of over 100 independent retailers across the United States and Canada that carry my products on my Stockists page. If you're looking for something in particular, I recommend calling up your local store first, since most have a smaller curated selection of my line, and don't carry the full range.
If you're based in West Seattle (or don't mind making the journey to this accidental island I find myself living on), you can request porch pickup Mondays through Thursdays. Just leave me a message in the notes section at checkout with the day and general time you'd prefer to pick up, as well as an email address I can contact you at. Then I'll be in touch about pick-up availability and will refund any shipping charges.
Consider this your friendly reminder to plan ahead to have your best chances of a lower-stress holiday season! :)
]]>Encourage your loved ones to enjoy the hobby of letter-writing with the updated Take Courage Care Pack. Featuring five greeting cards designed to uplift and inspire during these isolated times, you can give the gift of meaningful connection.
Two new holiday cards have been specifically designed for 2020. Send love and humor through the post by wishing your loved ones a new year that's mountains better than this one, or to wish them a safe and cozy holiday. Holiday cards are now available as single greeting cards or in sets of eight.
With so much time spent at home, it's no wonder that many of us are seeking a home décor glow up. Encourage a fresh look by giving the gift of an art print, or for the loved one who has everything, a one-of-a-kind original watercolor painting. Pair it with a favorite frame and you have a gift that's ready to brighten up the home office.
Ready to discover more stocking stuffers, gifts. home décor and cards? Visit the Yardia shop.
Spend your post-Thanksgiving weekend at home writing cards to your loved ones you might not be able to see in person this year. This is a great opportunity to be heartfelt and share your memories, love and gratitude. And don't forget to write a card for your hard-working mail carrier and the other essential workers in your daily life.
Use a wet cloth to seal the envelope and finish it off with a fun sticker or decorative washi tape.
Get your cards into the mailbox, or mask up and drop them off at the post office by December 3rd to best ensure timely delivery.
And look at that! You're all finished with your holiday mailing. Enjoy a mug of hot chocolate, cozy up by the tree and relax.
]]>You can now create wish lists in the Yardia shop!
Have you seen something you like? Heart the item (next to the buy button) to save to your wish list, and you won't need to search for it again. Find your wish list at the heart at the top of the website, next to the cart icon.
Plus, you can email your wish list to anyone you'd like to send a hint to and help them get started on their gift-giving plans too.
BIPOC Representation:
Currently, about 29% of Yardia's suppliers are owned by people of color (with about 14% Black-owned). Although this is higher than the percentage of BIPOC-owned businesses in the United States (only about 22%), my goal is to increase this number to 40% BIPOC-owned suppliers within the next four years.
In addition to its suppliers, Yardia is itself a BIPOC-owned company. As an indigenous CHamoru and multiracial woman of color, representation matters in a very personal way to me. Having a BIPOC woman as a mentor in my early adulthood and career (rest in peace, Alycia) made a huge impact on my personal and professional development, simply by being able to witness her in leadership roles and to receive her encouragement that I could do something similar with my own career. I hope I can provide this kind of legacy for the next generation of girls of color coming up, too.
Locations of Suppliers:
All suppliers that Yardia works with are based in the United States, with 28.6% in Washington, and 71% on the West Coast. Most materials they use in their printing processes are also US-sourced, except for camp mug blanks, which are imported.
My goal is to increase the number of Washington suppliers in order to reduce shipping distances in the supply chain and to support my local economy. This goal involves current active research, and will require patience to sell through current products before transitioning to new manufacturers.
Environmental Sustainability:
For products, camp mugs and stickers are made with conventional materials, so the primary focus is on paper products, packaging and shipping supplies. Cards and envelopes are 100% recycled, art prints are made with archival cotton-based paper, and wrapping paper is printed on conventional paper (it is recyclable, though, happily, which is a frequently-asked question.)
Most packaging supplies are recycled with occasional reused plastic pillows, bubble wrap or other packing materials from incoming shipments. Reusable shipping materials are always saved to stay within the shipping cycle to avoid the landfill. Backing boards on art prints are recycled, and plant-based protective clear sleeves used with cards and art prints are certified for commercial composting. Wrapping paper is packaged in conventional plastic tube bags.
My goal for the future is to transition to 100% environmentally sustainable packaging, and to reduce waste. Although the majority of materials are reused, recycled or compostable, materials like shipping tape and labels will transition to more eco-friendly solutions as available. To reduce waste, I encourage you to leave a note in the gift message area at checkout if you'd like your cards to ship without a compostable sleeve.
About the research process:
If you're a business owner or consumer looking to analyze the companies you work with or purchase from using a similar DEI and sustainability framework as I did, here are a few of the processes I found to be helpful. Note that this involves a good amount of very intentional online detective work, so it is worth allocating time to, and is an ongoing process.
I started by looking at the companies I already worked with in terms of their marketing messaging around these issues--on websites, about pages, blogs, social media accounts, and then compared these statements to actual data and leadership to get a more objective picture. I looked at who owned the companies, who served in leadership positions, and researched the individual leaders. I looked at what kinds of charity organizations the companies gave to and what political action groups and political campaigns the companies or owners financially supported.
When seeking BIPOC-owned suppliers, I used a combination of social media searching if the product is very specific, like vinyl stickers, and then followed the previous research to dig in deeper to each new company I found, collecting the information in a rubric-style chart to help me evaluate my options. For broader industries, like general printing as a whole, I also used state government databases to begin my research of companies in these sorts of manufacturing industries.
While this kind of research does take some time, it's something I relish and makes me feel like I'm getting a clearer understanding of the benefits and challenges of the companies I choose to invest in for manufacturing. I can be more certain that their priorities and values align with Yardia's by having the research and resources to back it up. Plus, it makes me feel like an armchair private investigator to do so.
This work is ongoing, so the data is current as of July 2020. As I continue to research and update my products (I already have two more changes I plan to make when I'm in need of new inventory, for example, but it will take some time before that happens), the numbers will adjust in the future.
Inafa'maolek. Make good. Strive for harmony.
]]>In the past, as a consumer, an educator and as a multiracial woman of color with a whole lot of privileges, my position as an ally and activist tended to be centered on advocacy through teaching (and, let’s be real here, at other times also through doing a lot of emotional labor).
But now, as a business owner, the opportunity I have is to ensure that the actions of my company do the long-term work to live up to my values and ethics. If I don't want my words to reflect a surface-level performance, and if I've felt disenchanted by corporations whose leadership, hiring practices, culture or vendors don’t match up to their words, especially when it came to race and equity, I now have the opportunity and responsibility to be intentional about the kind of company I create.
I can be honest about where Yardia has acted and where it falls short, where I've found solutions and where I'm still seeking answers. I'm sharing these questions and reflections for anyone else who might be seeking to reflect along similar lines. Consider this an independent journaling opportunity if you’re in need of one.
Here are the areas in Yardia that I'm currently targeting and reflecting on:
I've been in the process of examining my manufacturers and suppliers to determine how to best maintain Yardia's core values by paying attention to the values of partner companies. The main categories I've been looking at are: What does the company have to say (or does it) when it comes to equity and anti-racism? Are there any red flags in corporate messaging on blogs, social media or websites that warn their values may not align to those of Yardia? What does the leadership and team look like? And also: Do they provide environmentally friendly options in their products or services? Where are they located? Are they local to Seattle? These kinds of questions help me to seek out companies I'd like to form long-term working relationships with in an intentional manner.
During this audit, I've found two suppliers to immediately replace, confirmed one replacement supplier that I'm very excited to work with more, and found a few promising leads locally and nationally. It's an ongoing process to continue to look into with a lot of moving parts, but was far overdue for a refresh.
I've been reflecting on my artwork and communication, an area of business that is less about quantitative data and is instead more internal and personal, so my work here has reflected that.
When it comes to art, I'll continue to create with my authentic voice. That's often going to look like landscapes, nature, and the places where I find solace and belonging. And although I rarely paint images of people, when I do, I’ll continue to paint them in the skin tones I wished I could have seen more often in art when I was a child and student, seeking anything that felt like representation. I'm going to paint from my heart.
I've also reflected on communication and on the audience I'm speaking to. Some questions to ponder include: How often am I writing with a white audience in mind and how often am I writing with a BIPoC audience in mind? What explanatory commas am I inserting, consciously or not? How have I protected myself from white fragility? When have my words worked to maintain white supremacy? When have my words worked to dismantle white supremacy? How have I managed internalized racism? Who am I serving and who am I listening to? Does any of this change my voice?
These aren’t so much questions with simple or single answers, but have been helpful in journaling and processing thoughts. I included them in case they are helpful for your own reflections, too.
Although I'm nowhere near being ready to hire employees, especially not since the pandemic brought things to a halt, my next area of action is to begin to formalize plans to make Yardia be the kind of workplace I've wished for: one that prioritizes hiring black and brown talent. Although I've kept a few resources and organizations in my head with the thought that I'll turn to them for help to recruit employees of color when I need to, I plan to get this into a living document for when the time is right.
Some reflection questions include: How will I be intentional about recruiting employees from diverse backgrounds? How can workplace policies and procedures center and support inclusion and ethics? How can my workplace lift up employees to support their own goals, whether or not they include Yardia in their future? What kinds of financial realities will need to be in place to ensure policies, procedures and benefits are sustainable?
Right now, with no immediate plans to hire, these processes may be more on the general big-picture side, but creating a living workbook now will help me if and when the time arrives.
One of the easiest actions to take was to formalize Yardia's commitment to giving back to the community financially. I'm ashamed to say that although this has been something I've "planned" to do as a company since 2016, it took my grieving process of wanting to honor my grandfather's memory in a tangible way to finally take action in a long-term, sustainable manner.
To start, this looks like giving 5% of gross retail revenue from yardia.co to local charities on a monthly basis. What this means for you is that from now on, when you purchase anything from the website, you'll see a notice on the product page that 5% of the purchase will be automatically donated to Washington charities: Rainier Scholars, The ACLU of Washington Foundation and The Nature Conservancy of Washington. You can learn more on the Shop for Good page.
On a side note, while writing this blog post, I realized that this is right around the time that marks one year of self-employment. While I could have never have expected what this year had in store, I'm even more committed and grateful to be able to continue to learn and grow, to see the results of reflections and actions from a year ago, and to have the energy, drive and hope for the direction that the year ahead will take with the reflections and actions being put into place at this moment.
]]>needed to be crossed out completely due to lockdowns, travel restrictions, social distancing and budgeting needs, but a surprising number of other goals have either stayed the same and are in progress, or have been revised to better align with Yardia’s values.
Here are some of the changes I’ve made to my goals along with new opportunities I’ve discovered:
Instead of increasing the amount of markets I participate in, I’ve shifted my focus to ecommerce and auditing my online shop and marketing. For ecommerce, I committed to loving on, surprising and hopefully delighting customers like you with some secret actions (if you’ve ordered from me, hopefully you experienced this). I also increased my shipping days by using USPS porch pick ups since I know that there are a lot of shipping delays happening due to the increased use of online shopping. The more quickly I can get orders out the door, the sooner they can get to you.
I spent March studying email marketing and creating automated email flows, and I spent April working on photography, experimenting with a store-wide sale, and adding a good number of original paintings to my shop (there are still more I haven’t added yet!).
In May, I’m digging into visual storytelling, photography and social media marketing by taking a course that’s been on my list for a while as my next learning investment. At first I was worried about spending any money on myself or on my business other than basics during this time, but then I realized that 1. I’ve never regretted taking a class from someone I’m inspired by in the way that this teacher inspires me, 2. Every course I’ve taken has truly been an investment that’s returned to me in ways I couldn’t predict, 3. there's never been a better moment to have as much dedicated time to focus on learning as right now, and 4. It actually did work within my budget anyways. I’m so excited to start learning from Sara Tasker’s The Insta Retreat and we’ll see how it impacts my use of Instagram!
Although I was registered to participate in several markets this spring and summer, as the pandemic progressed, they were each cancelled. I’m planning to avoid participation any in-person markets for the foreseeable future, most likely at least until the end of 2020 unless there’s a significant breakthrough or vaccine. My thinking is that it would be challenging as one person to be able to be present in my booth while also maintaining frequent handwashing and other safety precautions, and would obviously bring with it a higher risk of contracting Covid myself. I figure the loss of revenue from markets is worth avoiding the risk of getting sick and having to shut down my business entirely until I recover. Once I made this decision, all of my planning and projections started to become clear as I saw a path for economic sustainability and business growth.
Usually, Yardia's main revenue streams come from online sales, wholesale, and in-person markets. In early March, wholesale and markets pretty much dropped off completely, but soon enough, online sales began to increase significantly, nearly covering the loss of the other two branches of my business. As time goes on and we get into the typically slower ecommerce summer season, I think my online sales will fall off to some degree, but I think this might also align with the reopening of some of my wholesale customers’ stores in some parts of the country. I’ve calculated some financial projections based on last year’s numbers for myself, so I’ll be preparing some options for marketing plans and release schedules, especially for the months that I’m predicting to be the slowest.
In my original new year goals, I wanted to increase my revenue by 60% and maintain expenses at around 40% of my revenue. I audited my revenue and expenses to better align with the new normal and I now have a new revenue goal amount to maintain my monthly salary. To do this, I also shifted my expenses to be at around 20% of my revenue (it’s crazy to realize how much was going into market fees and related expenses!) so that a larger percentage could help maintain my salary. So far, this system seems to be working really well for me. I feel comfortable working with a budget, and my revenue goals are both realistic and much less daunting.
I’m also tracking each month’s revenue and expenses to determine the length of my runway if I don’t meet my goals or budget for each month. My overall revenue for 2020 so far has actually increased year-over-year by at least 50% for each month, including in March and April. However, I’m also fully aware that last March and April I still had a part-time job with benefits, and I usually make more of my annual income from later in the year, through summer markets and winter holiday sales. I’m preparing for a slow summer, as I would in any year even without a pandemic, and I’ve built up reserves from 2019 holiday sales to help weather slower seasons.
I know that some of you who know me personally have been worried about me, especially considering this is my first full year of self-employment and that I’m a small business owner which is a pretty different mindset and way of working from the stability of typical employment. Hopefully this is helping you to learn how I’m doing, but I did want to mention that I’m beginning to do the practical thing, too, which is to seek help from the federal (and probably state) government.
At the beginning of April, I applied for the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL), which includes a grant advance that doesn’t need to be repaid. It took about a month longer than I expected to see any action, but at the beginning of May I received the advance deposited into my business account. This will help me to cover almost a month of business operating expenses.
Even though I’d heard horror stories about small businesses like mine not receiving federal funds intended for folks like us, this week I applied for and was surprised to be quickly approved (like, in the same day) for a federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan. As long as the funding comes through—it happened so fast that I’m still waiting to get my bank accounts verified before I can finish the process and receive the deposit—it will help me to stretch out the amount of time I can cover my own payroll before I’d have to dip into my personal emergency savings. This loan should be forgivable as long as it’s used within the guidelines which I've been diligently studying and have bookmarked for future referral.
I’ve also been told, repeatedly, by pretty much every single person I know that I ought to apply for Washington unemployment, too, since I probably qualify due to the number of cancelled markets and closed stores that have impacted my work life in ways that have been out of my control. While I’m still trying to wrap my head around this, I’ll most likely apply for this soon, too.
Use of time and taking breaks were areas I wanted to track and focus on this year. The main change to this ended up being that I now have a goal of taking weekends off, and to achieve the mimimal amount of income through work that I need to live a simple lifestyle in alignment with my personal values. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this pandemic, it’s that I don’t always need to be so focused on exponential growth upwards, but can instead shift to looking at my business as one that will continue to branch out slowly for long term sustainability. I realized that I’ve pretty much already built my dream life for myself with a safe home that feels like me, a garden that provides me with nourishment and peace, within a supportive community of people I care about, and in the city and state that's always been home. And this is something that I can take time to appreciate and relish in now, instead of always striving for the next big dream.
I also want to acknowledge the surprises that have come along the way so far this year, because they're all things to celebrate and grow from.
NSS: One of my goals was to register to exhibit at the National Stationery Show for 2021. Instead, I had an unexpected opportunity through the Greeting Card Association that allowed me to exhibit this past February in a way that was within my budget. I’m so glad I was able to do this when I did, and pull off the entire planning process in two weeks instead of a year like I’d thought I would.
Licensing Deal: At the Stationery Show, I briefly met two representatives from a large company that I can’t yet name. I forgot about this meeting until they contacted me a week later to partner with me on an illustration project and licensing deal. This project is what I spent most of my time working on during the first few weeks of lockdown, which gave me a small sense of normalcy and growth during the period when I felt the most grief and anxiety about the global situation. I’m really glad I was able to work on this project for them.
While it’s probably going to take quite a bit longer for my work with this company to be available to the public due to the industry they’re in, I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to learn the ins and outs of freelance illustration and art licensing while on the job, and during the beginning of a pandemic no less!
Business Club: In March, one of my business friends asked if a few of us wanted to start meeting over Zoom each week to support each other through the uncertainty. This has become one of the highlights of my week. Five of us gather to set goals, have uninterrupted time to share how we’re doing, ask each other questions, give feedback and generally cheer each other on. It’s so renewing to be able to share plans, wins and struggles with other folks who truly get what we’re each going through. I encourage you to check out their shops! They all make amazing goods. Honeyberry Studios, Cat Snapp Studio, Deschampsia and Oak Nut Studio.
Online Teaching: In April, the school I used to work at reached out to me to see if I’d be interested in teaching a six-week virtual art and leadership workshop for its incoming and accepted students. These are the topics I used to teach, so it was an easy yes. This course is still in progress, and while I don’t have any future plans to return to teaching as a career, I’m enjoying working with students and glad to learn how to structure an online course if that ever becomes something I want to pursue in the future. Creating an online course is something I’ve considered in the past, so figuring out the logistics in a way that feels comfortable has been a real treat. I’m also grateful to dig back into my leadership curriculum, because helping students to figure out their personal values, work with their inner critics and call on their inner mentors has been helping me to revisit these grounding lessons for myself, too.
Mentors: And as one last silly unexpected pandemic extra, a personal hero of mine who’s impacted my career and personal growth, personally reached out to me last week related to a project she's working on. Even though I realize she's a normal person who happens to have written my favorite book, I still ALWAYS get a little thrill of being star struck whenever I realize “she knows who I am!” So that was definitely a highlight for me, no matter how small it was.
My words of the year were Voice and Connection. No words have ever felt more appropriate to how I want to approach this time than these two. I’ve been learning that I need to reach out to others, to share my work, to ask for help, to give help, and to trust in the value of my creative voice.
I’ve thought A LOT about these two words as I’ve navigated this pandemic, and, along with Yardia’s core values, they’ve served me as guiding stars once I began to recover from my initial grief and anxiety, and move into acceptance and growth.
I don’t know where the rest of the year will lead me, but I will say this: even in the early days of March, when Seattle was at the forefront of the US outbreak and I was crying on the phone to my sister, I remember saying to her (well, sort of blubbering to her, really), “I know my business is going to come out of this stronger than it was before.” And that feels more true than ever.
]]>For Yardia, my word of the year is Voice. This is the word that kept calling to me starting around September, and I knew it was the right thing to choose because it terrified me. This is always a good sign for me that it's something I can work on and learn from. Here are a few of the ways I can see myself getting intentional around voice:
I also have a secondary word of the year for my personal goals, which is Connect. I think these two words will pair nicely together, and I'm curious about what I'll learn from them.
Overall, I'd like to work on my writing and further develop my brand voice through newsletters, Instagram captions and blogs like these. I'd like to be able to authentically capture Yardia's values not only through illustration, but through my words as well.
Email: After years of using an outdated email address, I finally purchased new email addresses for wholesale and retail. This year, I'd like to use my email addresses to maintain boundaries by setting up auto-responders when I'm not in office on vacation or on days off and market days. I'm considering having a constant autoresponder that might answer some frequently asked questions as well, but I'll need to play around with that idea a bit more.
Newsletter: Because of a good deal of bots being added to my subscriber list on Mailchimp and the fact that it no longer integrated well with Shopify, I decided to switch my email marketing provider to Klaviyo, which had been recommended by other stationery designers. My goal for 2020 is to take advantage of the features of Klaviyo as much as possible and set up useful automated email flows. Because it costs $30 per month to use this platform, I'd like it to bring in at least $60 per month from email marketing.
I'd also like to refine my voice in my weekly newsletters and give into my teacher nature by making sure that the newsletters contain useful information that better convey the Yardia lifestyle and company values. I received so much positive feedback about my Slow Holiday newsletter series last November and December, so I think I can try using similar formats during other months of the year as well.
I have less of a goal and more of an intention for Instagram in 2020. This year, I'd like to focus on intentional connection when using Instagram. Last year I ran a brief experiment that I was only allowed to use the app if I was prepared to comment on somebody else's post with something that was kind and true, in that I would have to write as a comment what I thought in my head when liking a photo, instead of keeping it to myself. I really liked how this changed the platform for me into another place to strengthen online relationships instead of as a platform for mindless scrolling or only commenting on my own posts. I'd like to refocus on that experiment again to reset my mindset about the platform once more.
Towards the end of 2019 I realized that I was at capacity for what I could do myself and really needed to start outsourcing some of the tasks in my business that either I could easily hand off to another person, or that someone else could do much faster and more thoroughly than I could. To start, I have two positions that I'll be seeking to outsource.
Bookkeeper/Accountant: I'm looking to hire on a bookkeeper to track my accounts and help me stay on track with my quarterly sales taxes and reconciling my accounts. I'll also hire an accountant for my taxes at the end of the year. This may or may not be the same person. I currently have about four options I'm looking into, so I need to make a decision and hand over this job.
Packaging contractors: I hired a friend at the end of last year to fold and package some of my greeting cards, paid per card, and could use some more help. This is a job that's great for someone either as a side-gig or even for a stay-at-home parent to earn a little extra cash, either at home or on a part-time basis in my studio. If this is a job that you might be interested in learning more about, please get in touch.
Increase gross revenue by 60%. I pay myself a salary that equals approximately 25% of gross revenue, and this level of growth will allow me to reach a stable monthly income. Last year my gross revenue saw an increase of 83% and I have some new opportunities coming up in 2020, so I'm certain I can make this happen.
Keep expenses at about the same percentage of revenue or lower. I know I'll have more expenses in 2020 with outsourcing some of my hires and with some potential trade show expenses that I'm saving up for, so I'll continue to implement the Profit First system to keep my finances sustainably on track.
I'd like to begin tracking my time at work a bit more intentionally, with a goal of working no more than 40-50 hours per week, if I'm being realistic. I'm honestly not sure how much I'm working right now, but I've gotten so used to working constantly after 11 years of doing both a day job and my business that relaxation and hobbies feel like challenges sometimes. I've burnt out at the end of December during a couple of recent years with impacts on my mental health, so this feels like the right thing to do for the sake of my future self. In 2020, I'd primarily like to focus on figuring out how to track my time effectively and then determine what changes I need to make after I have a better sense of how many hours I'm currently working. Here are my time-based goals for 2020:
I have several collection deadlines to work on this year, particularly for the trade shows I'll be doing in January and May. I'm behind schedule with my plans for my January collection, so some items might have to be pushed forward if I don't complete them within the next week. During the rest of the year, I'll need to work on illustrations at least a couple months in advance to have everything finished on schedule. Ideally, I'd like to be finished illustrating all of my greeting card collections for the year by the end of May.
This year, in a bit of a crossover between my professional and personal goals, I'd like to set some educational goals. I have a few areas of study to focus on as well as a list of books I'd like to read. I'd love to take a class as well, but if I don't find something that feels like the right fit, I'm okay with learning from books and podcasts instead.
In 2020, I'd like to read more books on paper instead of digitally, as a bit of a healthier way to unwind and decrease my screen time. I enjoy reading nonfiction, especially business and self development books, so I created a list based on recommendations from thought leaders I admire and books from business leaders I respect. To help me with this goal, I put each of these books on hold at my local library and spaced out the times I'll receive them throughout the year. I'll also mention that I have no qualms about quitting a book if it doesn't resonate, so I'm okay if I don't finish all of these. I only want to start them, and I'm sure that other new releases will come into my vision and be added to the list as the year goes on.
In 2019 my word of the year was abundance. Every year I expect to learn something from the shadow side of the word that calls me and this year was no exception. I took away from the year a new shift from a scarcity mindset to inching towards more of an abundance mindset. The biggest lesson I learned from abundance was to trust the process.
The most surprising lesson of abundance was that in quitting what I'd previously considered to be a steady day job for the uncertainty of self-employment, by the end of the year I came to more fully understand how working for myself provided a different kind of financial stability. Being employed by a company, my earnings were limited to my salary, so I felt a sense of scarcity in when deciding what to spend money on and when to be frugal. Now, I know that if there is something I value, I know exactly how to earn more money to afford it, and my earnings, in theory, are limitless. I'm in control over how much or how little I'd like to create and sell, and because of that, I feel a much stronger sense of security.
Craft Shows: Participate in 2 markets per month
I participated in 31 retail markets or 37 days, and 2 regional wholesale trade shows or 5 days, in 2019. This was an average of 3.5 days of markets each month, and the vast majority happened after I quit my day job in June. Markets were a pretty predictable source of income in that I could usually know how much revenue I could expect to earn at each one based on past experiences. There were only a few surprises--one fairly bad show based on my location (hidden with three other makers in a separate room from the other vendors, with no signage to indicate that we were in there), and two shows that were record-setters for me and far better than what I'd expected. I learned that my favorite two ways to sell my products are via in-person markets and through my wholesale partners, so I'd love to continue to focus on this revenue stream in 2020. I'll be able to continue to increase my craft market revenue in 2020 simply by increasing the number I participate in during the first five months of the year.
Invest in a market tent for outdoor shows and get over fear of setting up a tent:
Success! I asked for tent recommendations from an online group I belong to, invested in a tent that was the most recommended, and did enough outdoor shows to be able to learn how to set up and take down my tent by myself. Usually, though, other vendors would see me in action and offer to help, and I always accepted since it's quite a bit faster to do the process with two people. This was definitely a mindset success more than anything else because each time I felt scared to set everything up, I reminded myself that by the time my last scheduled show came around in August, I'd be over my fear. And I was!
Wholesale:
I had a goal of having my work carried in 100 stores by the end of 2019. Instead, I went from working with 40 stores at the beginning of 2019 to a net of 94 independent retailers in the US and Canada at the end of the year. There were more than 60 new stores added, and some that I removed from my list of partners if they hadn't ordered in a year (and a couple I'd given up on who ordered again!) I'm very proud of this growth and hope to continue to nurture my relationships with retailers in 2020.
Online:
Online retail orders were an interesting experiment this year. I made some changes to my Etsy shop, raising prices to align with their raised fees and pressure to offer free shipping. 2019 was also the first full year of having my own online shop through Shopify separate from Etsy (I opened my main store in late summer of 2018). What I saw was a transition from Etsy to my main store for many orders. My Etsy revenue decreased by 10% and my main store's revenue increased by 247%. Overall, online retail sales increased by 23% in 2019.
Focus on inventory, step back from drop-shipped items:
I didn't fully keep this commitment, but cut down on the number of items that were drop-shipped from my printing partner, discontinuing items as they expired on Etsy and discontinuing all drop-shipped art prints and camp mugs on my main website, to focus on inventory only. I released one collection of phone cases that were only available online. Again, however, I found that managing orders that included both drop-shipped items and items I kept in inventory to be confusing and a shipping challenge, so I've discontinued all drop-shipped items for 2020.
Financial Goals:
I had a goal to double my revenue and reach a level of bringing in six figures in gross sales. I increased revenue by 83%, but I did meet the six figure goal, so I consider this a success. I also set a fairly unrealistic goal of tripling my profit, which I doubled instead. Considering I had more expenses after quitting my day job, I consider this a win, especially since my profit grew more than my revenue. I feel like I predicted my finances fairly accurately and am on track to continue to build my business at a steady pace to provide myself with a sustainable income.
Tamanawis: rivers and fishing theme
Art prints and the Southwest
Holiday Collection
Mini releases:
Parks and Trails art prints
Phone Cases (limited release)
Stickers
Instagram: I started with 1506 followers and ended with 2163. Follow me on Instagram here.
Newsletter: I'm not sure how many subscribers I started with at the beginning of the year, but I'd like to track this for the future. I ended 2019 with 493 subscribers (after culling somewhere between 50-100 more who either hadn't engaged in a while or appeared to be bots.) I also upgraded my email marketing provider from Mailchimp to Klaviyo on the last day of the year. I'll probably explain more why I did this in my 2020 goals blog. Want to sign up for my newsletter? You can do so here.
Time off: I took a 5-day vacation in February, and then fully closed my online shops, email and social media from December 18th through the 31st for a holiday break. I also scheduled a day off each Thursday after quitting my day job (after years of not really having any days off). In 2020 I'd like to do more time tracking, so I'll use these numbers as a starting point for reference.
I quit my day job, which was not something I'd set out to do at the beginning of the year, but I'm so happy I made the leap with intention, deliberation and trust.
I secured my first licensing deal which you'll hear more about in mid-2020.
I rearranged my home to create my company headquarters in the basement with an inventory closet, office space and shipping zone. It's so much more functional now than when I had business items stored all over my house!
I attended Paper Camp in September, which was a pretty big investment for me, and worth every penny for the education during the weekend, advice from a sales rep, and continued learning I receive from the online community. I'm looking forward to further implementing what I learned in the new year.
The week of Black Friday, my most popular product, the Trees of the Pacific Northwest art print, was featured in the Sunday Seattle Times. While my work has been featured there before, it never really made a difference in the past. This year though, I saw a huge bump in sales and felt incredibly grateful throughout the Christmas shopping season each time a new collector at a craft show mentioned having seen my work in the Times.
Thank you so much for all of the support throughout 2019. It was transformational and I'm thrilled to see what's in store in 2020!
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Under your live native Douglas fir or western hemlock Christmas tree, amplify the season of giving with Northwest-themed wrapped gifts. Washington State symbols paired with Pacific Coast tidepool paper patterns can set off Yardia's most popular wrapping paper design, Pacific Northwest Evergreens. Wrap your gifts with hemp twine for a rustic look, or wide silk ribbons for a more elegant effect.
On the tree, use hand-painted Northwest-themed ornaments for a naturally woodsy look. Each ornament is painted by hand in watercolor with a Cascade mountains, moon or Puget Sound design on a pine wood slice. Each ornament is unique and a miniature work of original art. These ornaments will give your Christmas tree a rustic, cabin look, perfect for winter in the Northwest.
Shop ornaments
A favorite way to celebrate the season is with steaming mugs of hot chocolate, apple cider or campfire coffee. What better way to amplify holiday gatherings by serving your seasonal drinks in Northwest evergreen enamel camp mugs. These are some of Yardia's favorite gift products to give at any time of year, and the evergreen mugs, with their collection of native Northwest trees allow for evergreen identification to occur while sipping your favorite beverage by the fire.
These are just a few ways to bring Pacific Northwest décor into your holiday decorating this Christmas season. For more holiday décor, cards, gifts and wrapping paper, visit the Yardia shop.
To be the first to learn about new Yardia products and designs, sign up for the mailing list.
]]>1. Preview the vendors on the market's website and plan your shopping. This can help to come up with a game plan and let you follow the artists on Instagram or check out their websites.
2. Create a shopping list. Some of the most organized shoppers I've met have come prepared with a list of people they need to purchase gifts for, and occasionally with a list of vendors to visit. Feel free to put yourself on the list too, for permission to treat yourself!
3. Bring a reusable shopping bag (or two). Save yourself the hassle of single-use shopping bags and have a sturdy option on hand. This way, you can avoid having a bunch of smaller bags from different vendors, and free up your hands from carrying a stack of products that don't fit as well into regular handle bags, like art prints. Some vendors won't have disposable bags available, and some cities discourage single-use plastic bags as well.
4. For a slower pace, attend the show in the afternoon. You'll find an easier, more relaxed crowd and faster credit card processing when you shop later in the day, especially a couple hours before closing time. Crowds will be lighter, and you'll be able to browse with ease.
5. Don't be afraid to chat with the vendor about their process or inspiration. We love talking about our art because we're proud of what we've made and the businesses we've built! One caveat to this is that asking specifics about a maker's manufacturing sources or exact process and materials is a bit of a don't since it will give the impression that you're seeking information on how to make your own version instead of supporting the artist's work with a purchase.
6. Expect to pay sales tax on your purchase. Occasionally some makers will include sales tax in the listed price of their products, but this is a fairly difficult process to calculate. Small maker businesses are required to charge sales tax in states that have tax, so expect to be charged for it the same as any other retail store.
7. Expect to pay full price and don't haggle. You can think of a craft show as a pop-up artisan retail shop, not a garage sale or a discount store. Support your local makers by honoring the value of their products!
8. Bring both a credit card and cash. Almost all vendors accept credit cards these days, but some venues have limited wifi or cell service, so processing cards can occasionally be slow (especially in Hangar 30 at Magnuson Park, if you're in Seattle). It's great to have a backup for those times when credit card processing is glacially slow. Feel free to ask vendors if they have a preference for cash or credit, especially if you have exact change available.
9. Bring a friend! Craft markets are way more fun with a friend. As a vendor, I always enjoy my conversations with friends who are enjoying their time and asking questions about my products. Plus, it's great to have someone to consult about gifts as you're shopping.New to the Yardia collection, Pacific Northwest stickers have been super popular since they debuted in September. Some folks have even been planning ahead and picking up a few to save for holiday stockings this winter. The Mountain Is Out sticker and Seattle skyline stickers are waterproof, dishwasher-safe and weatherproof, perfect for your laptop or water bottle.
Hand-painted in watercolor with Pacific Northwest mountain and island-strewn ocean scenes on a natural slice of wood, each ornament is its own tiny work of original art. Truly unique, these ornaments are perfectly sized to fit in a stocking, and can serve as a handmade heirloom decoration to cherish of years to come.
For a limited time through the winter holidays, clear iPhone cases are available in a variety of Pacific Northwest designs, including evergreens, salmon, wildflowers and more. These soft cases are perfect to change out on your phone with ease, while still providing protection from bumps and falls. I've been so happy with the quality of the phone case I've been using on my own iPhone, and I love how it shows both the watercolor illustration and the color of the phone behind. Soft, lightweight and able to slip into a stocking with ease, this is a great way to bring some PNW vibes to your technology and brighten up your favorite tech-worker's holiday.
Shop phone cases
Ready to discover more stocking stuffers, gifts. home décor and cards? Visit the Yardia shop.
Want to be the first to shop new designs? Sign up for the Yardia mailing list.
Shopping small online for the holidays isn't the same as shopping from the big ecommerce sites. Often, you're buying from a single person who is handling making the product, packaging it and shipping it to you on their own. As a small maker business owner who has gone through a few holiday seasons now, here are a few tips I've learned from both my experiences as a shopper and from behind the scenes of running my online business. Hopefully this will save you any unexpected results and make your holiday online shopping a bit more peaceful!
You should always be able to find all of the information about where the product is made, processing time and more in the listing information, but some platforms, including Etsy will hide some of this information with a "learn more about this item" button, or something similar. It's always worth it to read everything, especially when purchasing from smaller companies who are often a single person taking care of all parts of the process!
When you're purchasing something handmade or from a small business, some items may have a processing time in which the product is made. In my shop, glass ornaments, ceramic mugs and phone cases fall into this category. I work with a printer to have each product made as it is sold, so during the holiday season these products can take around eight business days to produce. Although I put this information in multiple places in the listing, photos and order confirmation, I'm always surprised by how many people either don't read or don't believe the accuracy of the processing time and then get worried when their purchase hasn't shipped by the next day.
If you're sending the product to a different address as a gift, see if there's an option to include a gift message. Small companies have a variety of strategies for these messages, from including on a packing slip, to hand-writing the message on a branding enclosure. I recommend signing off the message with your name, too, since your information won't necessarily be located anywhere else in the package if it's delivered to a different person.
This is usually the slowest option, so if you're on a deadline, choose a different option with a more reliable delivery date. However, if you are shopping early (before Black Friday), definitely feel free to go with this option if a little extra shipping time doesn't matter!
Be patient and know that due to heightened volume of packages being shipped during the holidays as well as unpredictable winter weather, there are never any guarantees that your package will arrive on time. If you're really concerned about a deadline, purchase locally from an independent store or a craft market instead.
If you need your order shipped by a particular time, see if UPS is an option. This is often more reliable than USPS, and you can also request the package to be delivered to an alternate location at your home like a backyard deck instead of the front door if you're concerned about package theft.
USPS: If your shipment seems delayed, try these tricks first before contacting the seller. This will ensure that any updates or notifications about your shipment will come to you directly instead of having to go through the online seller first. The seller doesn't have any control over the shipment after it leaves their hands, but there are a couple of options that often work to get a package moving.
Text/Email Alerts: When you click on your package's tracking number, sign up for text or email alerts on the delivery below the tracking information, or sign up in advance for informed delivery. Other online makers and I have had pretty great luck with text and email alerts to get a package moving. I recently did this for an online purchase I'd made that seemed to just be sitting at the origin post office in the Midwest for several days. Once I clicked to request email alerts on the package, it suddenly started shipping and was delivered to my home in Seattle the next day.
Missing Mail: If a package is still not delivered, then fill out a missing mail form online. You might have to contact the seller to get the origin address information, but it's best for you as the buyer to do this so that any information or notifications from USPS come to you. This will get the process started of USPS searching for your missing package, if it's been misdelivered or is stuck somewhere in the system.
Visit your zip code's post office: My local post office has really great, helpful employees. It might be helpful to call or visit your post office in person to request help. However, as we get further into November, and certainly between Black Friday and Christmas, I don't recommend this option unless you're prepared to stand in very long lines or wait a very long time on the phone. USPS is just too busy in the local offices, and I think we should cut the employees a bit of slack.
These are only a few of the tips I've found to be helpful for online shoppers during the holiday season. The last one I can leave you with is to practice kindness. When you shop small online, keep in mind that you're chatting with a human being, and usually the owner of the business, not a bot or middleman. If we pause and consider how we're communicating with empathy from all sides, I think it would go a long way in creating a more peaceful holiday season.
This love card features mother moon in her crescent form, reaching her arms across the sky to the sun. It’s a reminder of just how much we all encompass within ourselves, the entirety of the universe.
I always recommend starting a gift with a thoughtfully handwritten card. No matter the event, Yardia has a card to fit the occasion.
Is it a housewarming party you're attending? Try the Welcome Home card.
A holiday party? Choose any one of the cards from Yardia's holiday collection, from Thanksgiving to Hanukkah to Christmas.
Want to express your gratitude for their generosity in opening their home? Try the Full of Gratitude card or any other from the thank you card collection.
Hostess gifts can range in size and price, and can be as meaningful or as practical as you make them.
If you know your hostess's style well, you might surprise them with a framed art print. Yardia art prints are in standard sizes of 8x10 and 11x 14, so they're easy to slip into pre-matted frames available in any home goods store.
Looking for a more practical gift? A Yardia camp mug is sturdy steel and enamel to give it a more modern farmhouse look, with three designs to match a couple's individual styles.
For a holiday party, consider bringing a hand-painted ornament to hang on the tree. Each of Yardia's ornaments are miniature artworks, painted by Brigida Swanson in watercolor on a natural wood slice. A one-of-a-kind way to celebrate your host.
Ready to discover more hostess gifts, home décor and cards? Visit the Yardia shop.
Want to be the first to shop new designs? Sign up for the Yardia mailing list.